


Phantoms Haunting Ghosts

by infinitecompositions



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Character Study, Loneliness, fear of the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 04:08:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26466970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitecompositions/pseuds/infinitecompositions
Summary: A fear of the dark was never just a fear of the unseen, of the monsters.It hurt more, and left less to his ever exact imagination.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Phantoms Haunting Ghosts

When you are afraid of the dark, people assume you are afraid of monsters.

Spencer had looked at, spoken to, and built rapport with too many monsters to be truly afraid of them. Wary, tense, side-eyed… yes. Afraid? Perhaps it was the job, perhaps it was desensitization. Either way, Spencer was not afraid of the monsters.

Dark, cold nights. Those were what he hated most. He lived in the wrong part of the country to avoid the dark and cold all the time, had the wrong job, too.

But if it got dark enough, cold enough… He never talked to the team about the winter nights when his teeth chattered away, no matter how high the heat was in his apartment. Chilled from the outdoors, and haunted by it in his home. The nights he curled in on himself, sometimes feeling a phantom hunger sometimes not.

As a child, it had been hunger. It had been injuries from bullies, from neglect, from his own lack of coordination.

His mother was sick. Had always been sick, as long as he had been alive. It wasn’t her fault, the days he trudged to school (perfect attendance, perfect grades) barely hiding how sick he was. The days his teachers debated sending him home. It wasn’t her fault, he couldn’t hold it against her. He _didn’t_ hold it against her.

It didn’t stop the truth. It didn’t stop the ghost-quiet whispers down his spine.

Dark cold nights were the strongest reminder he’d ever known…

The strongest reminder Spencer had ever owned.

He was alone.

The team was at his side in the day, under the lights of the precinct, in the lights of flashlights. Even in the streetlights outside a hotel.

But in the dark, he was as alone now, at thirty and change, as he was at eleven and twelve.


End file.
